News Day

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Think twice and find trusted sources: that’s the message I take from three of today’s big news stories about media manipulation in this campaign season. U.S. intelligence officers warned Congressional leaders last week that Russia is already deeply involved in the 2020 election, interfering to try to get Trump re-elected. Add to that the news that climate change deniers are using bots to generate nearly a quarter of all tweets about climate change and a separate story about Michael Bloomberg posting a misleading campaign video, and we all have reason to be wary. Continue reading →

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Think you’re too not wealthy enough to get audited by the IRS? Think again. The IRS audits low-income taxpayers at about the same rate as the top one percent. Why? Because it’s easier to audit lower-income families. Continue reading →

Impeachment rally. Photo by Phil Roeder, published under Creative Commons License.

Adam Schiff, in closing speech to Senate: “Every single vote, even a single vote, by a single member, can change the course of history. is said that a single man or woman of courage makes a majority. Is there one among you who will say, ‘Enough’?”

Senator Mitt Romney was the only one: the lone, courageous Republican vote to convict the president. Since his vote, Romney has endured the vehement denunciation that he knew would follow his vote of conscience. He has been denounced by people in his own party and by the President of the United States. His principled stand gets praise mainly from people whose politics remain far different from his own—people like Stephen Colbert. In his monologue, Colbert referred to his own faith, and then went on: Continue reading →

Photo by 401kcalculator.org, published under Creative Commons license

“The president is either brazenly lying about his 2021 budget or doesn’t know what’s in it,” writes Aaron Rupar at Vox.

Budgets are moral documents, meaning that where we put our money reflects what we believe and value. This record $4.8 trillion budget plan is a fairly immoral document. Luckily, it is a wish list and political platform, not a serious proposal with a chance of becoming law. If you want to know what’s in it, read on for a short and not-so-sweet summary, distilled from half a dozen news sources.

• Medicare and Social Security:  Cut spending on Medicare by “streamlining” the program.
• Cuts to safety net programs: Cut spending on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act by a trillion dollars. Reduce eligibility and cut spending on food stamps (SNAP) by $15 billion this year. Cut federal disability insurance payments by $70 billion. Cut housing assistance.
• Immigration: Add $2 billion for the border wall. Add 1,050 Border Patrol agents and 4,600 ICE agents and immigration court prosecutors, and 100 immigration judges. Increase the number of ICE detention beds to 60,000, at a cost of $3.1 billion.
• Foreign Aid: Cut by $3.7 billion, about 8 percent, and reduce or eliminate aid to the United Nations and other international organizations.
• Environment: The 26 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency includes  a mandate to “eliminate 50 EPA programs and impose massive cuts to research and development.” In the Interior Department, funding for the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service is slashed. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is cut by 97 percent. According to the New York Times:

“The budget does not mention climate change. It also states misleadingly that air pollutant emissions dropped between 2016 and 2018, and credited the Trump administration with overseeing “some of the cleanest air and water in the world” while eliminating clean air and water regulations.

“After a decade of improvement in air quality nationally, federal data last year showed that fine particulate pollution has increased in the last two years.”

• Education: Eliminate all federally subsidized student loans and the public service loan program, which assists teachers, police, and other government workers.
• Medical: Cut the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by nine percent.
• Military spending: Increases, of course, but cuts to intelligence gathering. (Who needs intelligence? Not this president!)
• Tax cuts, deficits, and national debt: The budget proposal extends tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the very wealthy, at a cost of $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Tax cuts have driven the deficit sky-high, increasing every single year of Trump’s presidency, and reversing significant reductions made during the Obama presidency. Trump promises to eliminate the deficit by 2035, but relies on optimistic projections that have failed time after time.

The deficit is the measure of how much spending exceeds income in each year. The national debt is the cumulative consequence of borrowing year after year to make up deficits. This budget projects a $3.4 trillion increase in the national debt by 2024.

While it will take up Congressional time and political space, this remains a fantasy budget, with zero chance of being passed by Congress. For that, at least, we can be thankful.

Marie Yovanovitch taking her oath before testifying to the House impeachment committee.

Marie Yovanovitch: “I have seen dictatorships around the world, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act.”

Marie Yovanovitch worked for the State Department for 34 years, ending her career as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She refused to go along with the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into becoming an arm of the Trump re-election smear campaign, so she was forced out of her post. Then she refused to be silenced, instead testifying under oath in the House impeachment hearings. She showed the highest kind of courage in refusing to give in to intense, high-level political pressure. Continue reading →

The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed while serving with the U.S. military.  

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman: “The uniform I wear today is that of the United States Army. We do not serve any particular political party; we serve the nation.”

On February 7, President Trump ordered the firing of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (and his twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman.) Despite Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s plan to leave his National Security Council at the end of the month, Trump ordered him marched out of the White House by security guards. Vindman is an Iraq War veteran who earned a Purple Heart, among other decorations. He was fired from the National Security Council for the now-unpardonable crime of testifying truthfully under oath when called by the House impeachment committee. Continue reading →

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Tired of fighting? Feel like voting / marching / calling Congress / all of it is pointless? Maybe you are suffering from democracy fatigue, which threatens to become both epidemic and chronic in the United States.

The causes are not hard to find: just turn to your Twitter feed, open your newspaper, or turn on the television and watch U.S. Senators waiting for their seemingly inevitable vote to continue the most corrupt and incompetent presidency of the past century. This president is not only a disgrace to office, but also holds that office despite receiving nearly three million votes less than his opponent. Has the Constitution failed to protect the country, or have we failed to honor the Constitution? Either way, we’re screwed.

This failure is not the end of the story. This is no time to give up. Now, more than ever, we must fight harder. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, of our country, of our world, we must take this country back from the minority who claim it now. And yes—they are a minority. They are far less than 50 percent, less even that the minority that voted this president into office. Never forget that he lost the election by three million votes. A majority said no to him, but the Electoral College said yes. Continue reading →

I find it hard to read about Martin Luther King, Jr. on his day, much less to write about him. My heart is too full, still, of memories of him, and of the years of struggle following his assassination. This year, though, it seems especially important to reflect and to reclaim the dream of an America-that-could-be, a dream he preached so clearly, a dream still so far from realization in our America-that-is. I read three reflections that moved and inspired me today, and want to share them with you.

The first comes from Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College who writes a daily blog called Letters from an American. She writes about heroes, and quotes a passage from the speech Dr. King gave on the night before he was assassinated, which seems especially appropriate today:

“Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. ‘Now that’s a strange statement to make,’ King went on, ‘because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.’ Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice….

Continue reading →

Joe Friday – Just the facts, ma’am

Did Poland ban mosques? Did Obama release Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from custody in 2004? Did 55 percent of conservative Christians tell pollsters they would disown children who were homo sapiens? Did the KKK march behind a Trump-Pence banner? Did  Pelosi use $15,000 worth of pens to sign the impeachment document?

No. No. No. No. No.

Every single one of these “news” items is completely false—like hundreds, maybe thousands, of others circulating wildly on social media.

Some of these lies are aimed at outraging progressive/left-leaning people, and some target the concerns of conservative/right-leaning folks. What they have in common is the damage they do, both by worsening divisions and distrust between us and by undermining belief in our news media and our democratic institutions. Continue reading →

Last night was bad enough, with Trump tweeting threats of bombing Iranian cultural sites. Iran has 24 cultural sites listed as world cultural heritage sites. Today is even worse. Continue reading →